instantly and wounded Boyd.

"He and me got to camp--keeping off the Ingins, who knowed I was
loaded--when we, with the rest of the outfit, drove the red devils away.

"They was Apaches, and the fellow that shot Thorp was a half-breed
nigger and Apache. He scalped Thorp and carred off the whole upper part
of his skull with it. He got Thorp's rifle and bullet-pouch too, and his
knife.

"We buried Thorp in the bottom there, and some of the party cut their
names on the stones that they covered his body up with, to keep the
coyotes from eating up his bones.

"Boyd got on to the river with us all right, and I never heerd of him
after we separated at Booneville. We pulled out soon after the Indians
left, but we didn't get no buffalo-meat.

"You see, boys, if I'd a fired into that cow, the devils would a had me
before I could a got a patch on my ball--didn't have no breech-loaders
in them days, and it took as much judgment to know how to load a rifle
properly as it did to shoot it.

"Them Ingins knowed all that--they knowed I hadn't fired, so they kept
a respectable distance. I would a fired, but the quail saved my life by
interfering with my sight--and that's the reason I don't eat no quail. I
hain't superstitious, but I don't believe they was meant to be eat."

Uncle John stuck to his text, I believe, until he died, and you could
never disabuse his mind of the idea that the quail lighting on his rifle
was not a special interposition of Providence.

Only four years after he told his story, in 1872, one of the newly
established settlers, living a few miles west of Larned on Pawnee
Bottom, having observed in one of his fields a singular depression,
resembling an old grave, determined to dig down and see if there was any
special cause for the strange indentation on his land.

A couple of feet below the surface he discovered several flat pieces
of stone, on one of which the words "Washington" and "J. Hildreth"
were rudely cut, also a line separating them, and underneath: "December
tenth" and "J. M., 1850." On another was carved the name "J. H. Shell,"
with other characters that could not be deciphered. On a third stone
were the initials "H. R., 1847"; underneath which was plainly cut "J.
R. Boyd," and still beneath "J. R. Pring." At the very bottom of the
excavation were found the lower portion of the skull, one or two ribs,
and one of the bones of the leg of a human being. The piece of skull was
found near the centre o